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LITR 4231 Early American Literature |
Final Exam Essays 2014 Sample answers
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Sarah Robin Roelse
May 1, 2014
Origins, Origins, Everywhere!
Coming into Early American Literature, I was
so afraid that I would be horribly bored; I am accustomed to reading more modern
novels that tend to border on the gothic, horror, or even sometimes romantic
fiction, but I was oddly surprised and delighted by the course reading list!
Whenever I think of “early” American literature, I think about dry,
mundane, and tedious writings that seem archaic and hard to decipher, but this
class couldn’t have been more the opposite of what I had imagined in my mind.
I enjoyed the direction that course led us from, starting with
pre-colonial styles of writings, which included letters mostly, and moving us
forward onto the creation of the early novel—something that was exciting to see
and read. One of the most enticing
aspects of the class for me was learning about the various origin stories from
cultures, and the application that origin stories really did hold throughout the
semester. I think that more often
than not, origin stories – be it the creation of humanity, the development of a
civilization, the artistic and intellectual shifts in culture, or the changes
that people make within themselves to be better humans – reflected much of the
course material that was covered throughout the semester.
As far as my individual learning is concerned, I focused
mainly on origin stories for my midterm (Connecting Origin Stories from Utopias
to Morals to Recreation) and studied about the Salem Witch Trials for both of my
research posts (What Have We Learned From The Salem Witch Trials? and History:
Does it Repeat Itself or are We Merely Foreshadowing Something Bigger?);
while these issues may seem so totally different from each other, they actually
do meet up and cross paths for learning purposes! Many of the origin stories
that we focused on in our early classes were in terms of Biblical or cultural
orders, but the Salem Witch Trials take on a whole new subtext for origin
stories because it allows us to see where we, as humans,
changed our mindset to realize when a
force was being taken too far and gaining too much power over us.
Origin stories can span from the creation of mankind to even just mankind
making a change with who we are and the way we think – this is shown in one of
the poems we read early in the semester when discussing Native American
literature and how a white woman is determined to change the way her community
portrays a Native American in their local parade. The same can be said for the
Salem trials where we learned the error of our ways and veered back onto the
correct moral course instead of leading to mass murders of people when there
wasn’t even evidence of them doing wrong.
The concept of origin stories that I previously mentioned
from my midterm can actually be sprinkled throughout our entire course, if you
can believe that! In the instances
of The Declaration of Independence, we have the origination of our country being
formed on the basis which we still hold dear today.
While we may not think about this structure of our country on a
day-to-day basis, it is the
fundamental and original workings of our society that still hold strong and will
probably continue to do so for a while into the future.
More origin stories include the writings of Charles Brockton Brown’s
Edgar Huntly and Susanna Rowson’s
Charlotte Temple.
These two stories were great to read because it really helped to see not
only the birth of the American novel, but because it also showed us a glimpse of
the first wave of female novelists (which to a class that is formed
predominantly of women, is a very appealing topic!).
Both the female-to-female writing in
Charlotte Temple and the emergence of
the gothic in Edgar Huntly serve as
their own origins because they opened a whole new world for not only writers,
but thinkers of the time.
Another concept of origin stories that I mentioned above was
the emergence or creation of something completely new to society. Over the
course of the class, I have learned new
(what every college student dreams of) information about the birth of different
time periods which brought about lovely changes to our culture over the ages.
From the Enlightenment to the Romantic and onwards through the Gothic, I
have seen a major change in not only how our society thought but how they
created. I greatly appreciated the
ways in which our class fused music and artistry into the course materials,
because it showed that there wasn’t a limit on what American culture extended
to. Many of the things that we
discussed (such as art, music, and poetry) are still things that we as Americans
enjoy today – we still appreciate historical paintings and art (museums), we are
still making music (often in that Romantic-esque style which we studied), and we
still love to read and write poetry.
When taking all of these little details into perspective of how we apply
them to our daily lives now, it only seems practical that we would learn about
how they affected the people of the past as well as how they have helped to
shape society as it is today.
Over the course of the class, we were able to view history
from many different viewpoints, which I think is very important, particularly in
a college course where people tend to be more open-minded.
By incorporating these different texts, we as students were able to see
history unfold as multiple groups of people experienced it, not simply as a
representation of what a generalized curriculum thinks we
should see.
Interweaving these different cultures really helped the class form as a
whole group of thinkers and speakers because it made us realize that there were
settlers coming from all over the world to America at the time and creating
literature, art, music, and other forms of entertainment (culture!); by showing
students that it takes all kinds of people to create a community, it allowed us
to be free with each other in the class and helped us to respect all viewpoints
that were shared. This type of thinking and open-mindedness can take on an
origin story of itself, if perhaps there was a student in the class who was
non-compliant with trying to understand peer point of views or thoughts, the
type of open discussion that the class centered around forced students to break
down that barrier of self-righteousness and value others for their differences.
Overall, my experience in this course has not only encouraged me to not only take more classes with this professor because of the varied styles that we were able to learn about in such a short time, but to further my studies on literature and the culture that makes humanity who we are today. I never thought that I would enjoy hearing and learning about America’s backbone from all of the generalized and biased courses that I have previously taken, but this class enabled me to see our country shape itself and the people who made that happen. In keeping to my theme of origins, this has created a small fiend in me that wants to know more and more about how our country was molded by the people of our past; even though I have never been a fan of what most consider “early” American literature, I will definitely be adding some classic and popular novels from several different authors that we have covered in this semester to my personal summer reading list.
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